


Burning

by jottingprosaist (jane_potter)



Series: Set Fire to Our Bed [1]
Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: M/M, No Sex, Non-Consensual Spanking, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Pain, Public Humiliation, Punishment, Skyrim Kink Meme, Spanking, Thieves Guild
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 16:04:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4269534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jane_potter/pseuds/jottingprosaist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At Goldenglow, Alik accidentally lights all but one of Maven's bee hives on fire. In punishing him for that mistake, Mercer crosses a line.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burning

**Author's Note:**

> (Original prompt: http://skyrimkinkmeme.livejournal.com/4941.html?thread=11003469#t11003469)
> 
> As per the original prompt, contains the spankee and the onlookers being aroused by the situation, but no actual sex/sexual contact. Smut (in the form of hurt/comfort fix-it fic) shall commence in the sequels.

The only thing forcing Alik to return to the Cistern was the fact that he knew, from hard experience, that running away from problems would only make him the object of a chase. Especially problems he'd created for a major Guild. A major Guild of criminals, no less.

Chin up, trying to ignore the fact that he stank of lake water and burning thatch, Alik strode into the Cistern.

They were already waiting for him, of fucking  _course_. When Alik emerged from the shadows, Rune stopped tapping a ladle on the side of the cooking pot; Niruin and Thrynn broke off their conversation to stare. It wasn't just that they must have heard the hidden door grinding shut behind Alik, either. He could tell from the expressions on their faces-- Thrynn's grim, Rune's pinched with secondhand embarrassment-- that they'd already gotten word of just what had happened at Goldenglow.

_Easy, Alik. You're ready for this. You just have to open your mouth and say what you planned. Just--_

"You!" barked Mercer. The noise of his chair skidding back violently echoed off the Cistern's dome. "Get over here, boy.  _Now_."

The Guild Master's guttural voice brooked no disobedience, and certainly none of the light-hearted snark Alik had rehearsed. Wincing, Alik slunk around the central pool to Mercer's desk. Humiliation made even the brief walk long and terrible.

"Mercer," called Brynjolf, hurrying over from the central bridge where he'd been standing-- waiting for Alik? Hoping to intercept him first?-- "Don't bother yourself. I've got this."

"Believe me, Brynjolf, I am already  _incredibly_  bothered." Mercer turned his glare back on Alik. 

Was it Alik's imagination, or did Brynjolf look pale? "The lad's my new recruit. I'll handle him."

"Clearly you can't," Mercer snapped. "Or else I wouldn't have spent the last hour bent over for Maven."

Looking more unhappy than angry, Brynjolf hesitated for one last moment before backing off, leaving Alik to Mercer-- though he stood not back with Niruin and Rune and Thrynn, but up closer and off to the side, just in the corner of Alik's eye, as if he couldn't bring himself to retreat farther.

Alik quailed beneath the Guild Master's renewed focus. As a Breton, Mercer had little in the way of height over him. What Mercer  _did_  have was age, muscle, and a nasty temper that made him seem entirely capable of snapping a skinny Nord cutpurse in half.

"Can you count, boy?"

"It's Alik," he said, before he could stop himself. He swore he heard someone in the watching shadows draw a sharp breath of shock.

Mercer's eyes had gone poisonous. "What was that?"

Alik swallowed hard past the lump in his throat.  _Stupid_. He loathed being called 'boy'-- had spent too many  _fucking_  years being called 'boy' by every guard and merchant and pissant citizen without the smallest shred of respect for a guttersnipe, even one who was twenty years old and very much a man, even one they  _saw every single day_ \-- but he knew there was a time and place to pick his battles. Not when Mercer already wanted his blood, for instance.

No choice but to barge through it now, though. "My name, sir. It's Alik. Sir."

After a horrible pause, Mercer repeated, "Alik," in a slow growl. It was worse than 'boy.' "Can you count,  _Alik_?"

A hot flush burned up his cheeks. "Yes, Guild Master, I can count."

"Count to three, Alik."

"Sir--" The sight of Mercer's knuckles flexing made Alik break off his protest. Weak with embarrassment, he mumbled, "One, two, three."

Someone behind him snorted. Thrynn? Alik jerked to look, only for Mercer to grab his collar and yank him back to attention.

"How many beehives did Brynjolf tell you to burn, Alik?"

"Three, Guild Master."

"Then  _explain_  to me," Mercer snarled, his voice rising, "why Maven Black-Briar has one-- _one_  single godscurst hive left producing honey on her entire estate?"

"It was the wind," Alik pleaded, finally able to choke up the defense seething in his chest. "The hives were so close together, and one of my arrows went wide, and then... the wind, it just blew the flames up so high that everything caught fire. And then the mercenaries knocked down one of the hives--" Because Alik had shoved him into it face-first-- "--and another one fell, and--"

"Shut your mouth," Mercer ordered, hard as death. "The correct answer is because you're a terrible archer, and a worse thief. Because you don't plan and you're evidently not even capable of carrying out a plan that someone else already gave to you. And frankly, you're more of a liability to this Guild than you ever were a benefit."

Alik's heart seized in his throat. "No, don't," he blurted. He'd beg if he had to, but he did it in a hoarse whisper that hopefully none of the onlookers could hear. "Please, sir, don't throw me out of the Guild. I can do better, I can--"

Mercer slapped him open-palmed across the jaw.

In the shadows Brynjolf hissed and surged forward a few steps, only to retreat stiffly at Mercer's black look. Once the shock had passed, Alik snapped his mouth shut. He knew that no matter how the slap had hurt, it had been a mere warning.

"You'd better worry about  _this_  mess of yours before you start promising me better," said Mercer, grabbed Alik by the collar again, and shoved him without warning toward the nearby desk.

Alik stumbled into the desk, banging his thighs hard on the edge. He had to catch himself from falling face first into the wood, which sent a pile of Mercer's papers sliding across the desk. The arched vault of the Cistern amplified sounds from the shadows: a hiss of sympathy, a chuckle that Alik knew for sure now was Thrynn.

"Shut up," Rune hissed.

"Look at him, falling over his own feet," Thrynn muttered back. "Haven't seen a thief that clumsy since Molgrom 'tripped' and stabbed his mark in the eye."

"Up," Mercer ordered. Before Alik had time to obey, Mercer pulled him up by his collar once more-- by the back, now. Momentarily choked, Alik did his best to keep up as Mercer hauled him around the desk and then pushed him down across it again. The difference was that now he was facing out into the Cistern, able to see the Guild members looking on. His face burned with shame.

"And since you act like an idiot child," Mercer said grimly, "you're going to be treated like one."

Alik hadn't managed to work out what he meant before the first burning strike landed on his ass.

Yowling even louder than the  _crack_  of Mercer's palm, Alik bolted upright and slammed his thighs into the desk again in his blind attempt to escape.

"What the hell was that?" he demanded, his voice too-high.

Mercer collared him yet again before he could stumble away from the desk. Alik struggled, but his first analysis of the Guild Master had been correct: Mercer had the muscle to force him down and hold him there. At least the elbow Alik had got beneath his chest kept Mercer from pushing him down flat.

"Your payment for the job," Mercer snarled. "That's what." And he slapped Alik's ass another four times in swift succession, each one hard enough to make Alik yelp.

"Mercer, that's enough!" His face a thundercloud, Brynjolf came striding out of the shadows. "This is not how we do things around here!"

Mercer kept Alik pinned with a sharp elbow against his spine, pain discouraging movement. "Maybe it should be. After all, you're supposed to be in charge of discipline around here, but clearly your friendly hand isn't very effective."

Trapped and already sweating with pain and humiliation, Alik risked a pleading glance up at Brynjolf. The Day Master caught his eye for just a heartbeat before folding his arms over his chest and stepping closer to loom at Mercer. He was a full six inches taller than Mercer, yet Alik felt a hysterical giggle rising in his throat at how badly outmatched Brynjolf seemed in the face of the hunched, glowering Guild Master.

"This is  _not_  the way, Mercer. Let the lad up. You've already done more than enough."

"If you're concerned for the boy's safety, Brynjolf, it shouldn't be me you're worrying about," Mercer growled. "It's not my business he burned down. And if you think for a second that Maven doesn't want him dead right now, you're wrong."

Alik's blood ran cold. Brynjolf's gaze flicked down to him again, and Alik saw the real fear on his face.

"How many people from the meadery has she put at the bottom of Lake Honrich this year?" Mercer continued. "Three? Four? And that's just for not having the ability to deliver a proper sales pitch. What do you think she'll do to this one--" He shook Alik roughly-- "--for burning up her precious bees?"

"And beating him is supposed to protect him from that?" Brynjolf demanded incredulously.

"It's supposed to teach him better!" Mercer barked. "I've already asked her not to send Maul after members of the Guild-- which didn't make things any better for  _me_ , by the way-- but if she decides to set her thugs on him anyway, I can't change that. Until then, I intend to make sure he  _never_  makes a mess like this again."

Mercer's elbow lifted. That was all the warning Alik had before Mercer struck his ass even harder than before-- one slap and then a deliberate pause. Gasping, Alik craned his neck to see Mercer and Brynjolf locked in a staring contest, a silent power struggle. Mercer hit him again, and again, daring Brynjolf to stop him.

And between the pain and the hot proximity of the two older men, Alik felt his cock twitch the next time Mercer slapped him.

He gasped more loudly than he'd meant to. It made Brynjolf's eyes jerk down to him again. The Day Master's face was full of poorly concealed alarm and sympathy and struggle.

"Mercer," Brynjolf said, one last time, but his protest was weaker and Alik knew that he'd lost.

"This is my Guild," Mercer ground out. "And I'll run it the way I see fit. Unless you'd like to take the boy in hand?"

The last was mocking, drier than any humour had a right to be. Before Brynjolf could accept, Alik shook his head furiously:  _no, please no_. It was one thing for Mercer to spank him in front of half the Thieves' Guild; it would be another thing for Brynjolf to do it. He was the one who'd sponsored Alik into the Guild, who'd advised him and trained him-- the one who Alik had surreptitiously jerked his prick to in more than passing fancy. And Brynjolf  _would_ , too, if only to show him more mercy than Mercer. But it would be so much worse.

"Be reasonable," Brynjolf said stiffly, and backed away once more.

Alik swallowed and shifted beneath Mercer's grip. He should have been most afraid of the beating-- hell, for the fact that his colleagues were  _watching_  it-- but all he could think of was his cock. He had no idea if his breeches were tenting yet, or if they were going to. If anyone would be able to see.

Mercer's hand closed on the nape of his neck, hard and rough with calluses. "Down," he ordered, pushing mercilessly. Alik let his elbow slide out from under him and went down flat on his front, wincing when the movement sent a couple of papers fluttering off the desk. Mercer growled in annoyance, nails digging momentarily into Alik's throat.

It made Alik swallow and shudder abortively. His cock pulsed with interest.  _Fuck._

"Don't bother counting," Mercer said, and drew his hand back.

The blow made Alik yelp even through he'd been bracing for it. It echoed around the Cistern. Mara's mercy, he'd never be able to face the Guild again if he squalled the whole way through like a brat. Red-faced, Alik bit the inside of his cheek and suffered the next few slaps in silence. Still, he couldn't stop himself from jerking with pain each time.

Mercer was unrelenting. He kept up a swift rain of blows that soon had Alik trembling with the effort it took to restrain himself. Unable to help it, Alik twitched and twisted his way across the desk in a futile attempt to escape until his hips fetched up against the edge and he could go no further. Mercer snorted in derision, re-settled his grip on Alik's neck, and went at it with renewed vigor.

" _Shit_ ," Alik heard Niruin whisper, over the brutal crack of Mercer's hand.

The pain was quickly becoming as overwhelming as the humiliation. Each successive burst of red-sparked pain built on the previous, falling too fast to Alik to recover. Alik's jaw quivered on the edge of opening to howl. He could not. He could  _not_.

Finally, frantic with pain, he bucked up against Mercer's restraining hand. The sudden movement took Mercer by surprise, because he allowed Alik a full eight inches of leeway. Then he regained control and used both hands to smash Alik down full-length into the desk.

The force of it crushed a shout out of Alik's chest. Mercer's body was a hot, taut-muscled weight on his back. Beneath it, Alik lay gasping for breath at his own stupidity. And there was no question now that his cock was fattening, pressing half-hard into the seam of his breeches.

"I will not be disobeyed," Mercer rasped in his ear. "Am I understood, boy?"

One of his fists formed a fist in Alik's curly hair and pulled until tears pricked the corners of his eyes. Against his will, Alik saw his Guildmates across the Cistern: Thrynn, watching avidly; Niruin, learning on the wall with his arms crossed; Rune, visibly unhappy and unable to look for more than two seconds at a time. Everything was too blurred at the edges for him to make out Brynjolf.

"Yes, Guild Master," Alik whispered.

The agony of Mercer's interrupted assault had faded to a dull hot glow, throbbing with the same pulse as his half-hard cock. Mercer drew back and slapped his ass once more, a sudden sharp spike of fresh pain that only made Alik's cock jump, his breath stutter. Without meaning to, he surged his hips into the desk: away from the blow, into contact. Both.

"I should have known," Mercer said then, making Alik suddenly nauseous. "You're a slow learner."

Instead of hitting him, Mercer grabbed the waist of his breeches and yanked. They slid three inches down Alik's bony hips. With a strangled shout, Alik tried to climb across the desk to escape. Mercer sighed and pinned him by the neck once more.

"No, don't-- Guild Master, please Guild Master--"

"Shut  _up_ ," Mercer growled, wrenching his breeches again one-handed, "and take it-- like-- a man. Or leave."

Wool burned over the arches of Alik's bony pelvis to expose his ass to the clammy air of the Cistern.

Alik went abruptly limp when he realized two things: that he'd lost the struggle, and that his bare ass was all Mercer had wanted. Not to expose Alik's standing cock. Mercer hadn't even noticed it, or surely he would have. But with Alik bent over the desk, his breeches were still jammed over his cock in front, and barely under the curve of his ass behind. He was still safe.

Barely.

Mercer's next swat was  _loud_ , skin cracking on skin, and it made Alik's entire body jolt helplessly. His hard-on ground against the edge of the desk. Everything was pleasure-pain, raw and dangerously close to the edge of unbearable.

"Better?" asked Mercer, in a tone so close to civil but for the sheer venom in it.

Alik shoved a wrist in front of his face and sank his teeth into it.

Mercer resumed hitting him as if to make up for lost time, a fast and ruthless one-two smack across either side of his ass. Agony flashed and bloomed in white crests, winding every muscle of Alik's body tighter and tighter in an effort to bear it. Alik quivered with increasing violence until, right on the edge of screaming, he realized that Mercer was slowing down. Not stopping-- never stopping, it seemed. But he had worn the edge off his rage and settled into a slower rhythm, one that at least gave Alik a heartbeat to gasp between blows.

That didn't mean much. His heart was racing and his gasping was hardly any slower.

"What in the hell is going on in here?" someone demanded-- someone female. Vex. Then there was a sudden appalled silence where her next words should have been, and Alik knew she'd seen. Humiliation made him bite his wrist even harder. At last, tears squeezed out the corners of his clenched eyes.

His cock was hard as stone.

Rocked by the force of Mercer's blows, Alik tried not to hear Thrynn rumbling an explanation at Vex. They were both keeping their voices down, Vex's outraged even beneath the hush, but the Cistern amplified every sound. Mercer didn't seem to care, if his unrelenting assault was any indication. Alik wished he did.

Everything hurt. There was no longer any moment when the pain faded even the tiniest bit. It just washed through him, a white-hot agony blotting out rational thought from his mind, filling him up to the cracks until he couldn't think of anything beyond  _it hurts, it hurts, it hurts_. Alik's sleeve was wet with tears and slobber, and it just  _barely_  muffled the anguished noises from his throat.

"Look at that," said Dirge, audible even over the sound of Alik's smothered hiccuping breath in his own ears. "Look at  _that_."

"You're disgusting," Vex hissed. "Get out."

"You hate it so much, you get out," Dirge replied. His cold voice had gone uncharacteristically lazy, distracted and drawn out.

Dirge was turned on, Alik realized, the thought coming through in broken stutters. It made a hysterical bubble well up in his chest. He wasn't the only one.

"Stubborn-- fucking-- mule," Mercer ground out.

And suddenly it was over. Alik waited, shaking with tension, for the next slap to fall, but nothing happened. The pain crested and then, unbelievably, began to ebb. He gave a high-pitched moan. A quivery wave of relief flooded through him, leaving him boneless on the desk. He had legitimately forgotten what it was to not  _hurt_.

Oh Mara. Oh Stendarr. The pain was fading to an ache and he was tingling, coming loose of his body, light as air. His mind felt soft at the edges, soft as tundra cotton stolen by the bale. And Divines, his cock was hard, and in Alik's floating state its throbbing felt good, pleasure smearing through his whole body with every pulse of his heart. He wanted but he could stay like this forever.

Then, even through the softness, Alik sensed Mercer moving to his right. He flinched. Through the desk he felt the impact of a drawer being wrenched open. Mercer's breath was coming in short, angry bursts.

"Mercer,  _no_ ," said Brynjolf sharply.

Alik forced his eyes open. The pit of his stomach dropped. Out of the drawer Mercer had pulled a straight rule, the one he used for drawing meticulous charts of their earnings and losses. It was as long as Alik's forearm, thin vicious oak with a gleaming metal edge.

"Be quiet," Mercer snapped.

"Dibella's pretty tits," Dirge groaned.

"Mercer--"

Alik only realized that he'd been lying slack in place when Mercer's hand came down on his nape again, the hard clutch of reality.

"You will learn," Mercer promised savagely.

The sound of his Guildmates' voices bursting out around him in excitement and dismay was the only thing that reminded Alik to bite his wrist and muffle his wail in time.

The rule left a white-hot streak of agony across his ass, razor-sharp and crueler than any slap from Mercer's palm. He was cut, he was bleeding-- he had to be bleeding. It hurt _too much_. Whimpering against his wrist, Alik squirmed up on his toes to strain uselessly against Mercer's pinion even as he clung to the front edge of the desk for dear life with his free hand. He couldn't-- couldn't--

Mercer hit him a second time, a brutal snap of oak and steel, and Alik's self-control shattered. He bucked and kicked helplessly until the mind-blanking agony receded. It left him shaking, trying desperately to hide his sobbing in the crook of his arm. He didn't enjoy this any more. There was no pleasure in it, just blistering agony that wilted everything good.

"Mercer, what are you doing?" Vex was shouting, as Brynjolf yelled, "Stop it!"

The rule cracked down a third time-- a fourth-- and Alik finally snapped open his jaw and screamed.

His agony was a terrible noise ripped from somewhere deep in his chest, deeper than his lungs. It punched out into the stones of the Cistern, carrying on and on until Alik ran out of air and his scream ripped off into silence. In the aftermath, the dome rang like a bell until the stones trembled back to stillness.

"Finally," Mercer said, though he sounded shaken.

Brynjolf swayed, gasped for breath, then seized the shocked silence before anyone else could. "That is  _enough_."

Alik was weeping into the desk, but he heard sounds that he put together in his mind later: Brynjolf striding forward and ripping the rule out of Mercer's hand. It splashed into the pool.

"Lad," Brynjolf was saying, a palm tentative on Alik's curls. Mercer's callused hand was gone. "Come on, now, lad. Easy does it. Take a breath."

Hurting, humiliated and ashamed, Alik tried to control his crying. The sobs he choked off, but his body continued quivering, wracked by violent aftershocks of pain. Every muscle felt used to exhaustion. His head was stuffed and dizzy. Awkwardly, Brynjolf thumbed at the tear-streaked cheek not pressed into the desk, which did little but make misery twist in Alik's chest.

"You're lucky Sapphire wasn't here," Vex was saying, her voice as hard as Alik had ever heard it.

"I knew damn well Sapphire wasn't here," Mercer replied grimly.

"You think she won't hear about this?" Vex demanded. "What then, Mercer?"

Upon realizing--too late-- that Brynjolf was no longer in the shadows but up close enough to see his bare ass, Alik clumsily reached back and attempted to pull up his breeches. The movement made him groan in anguish.

"Easy," Brynjolf murmured. That was worse.

Alik had to fumble his belt buckle open in order to pull up his breeches again. His cock was had softened to nearly nothing, yet it still throbbed in confused pain of its own. He couldn't tell from the feel of his ass whether he was cut or not; even the softest touch was agony that ruined his brain's ability to interpret what his fingers were feeling.

Once he had his belt buckled, though, Alik put his hands up to the desk beside his head again, and there was blood smeared on two of his fingers. He was too numb to react.

He was also trembling almost too hard to push himself up. Brynjolf helped him stand with a tight hand on his elbow. So  _weak_. And upright once more, Alik couldn't pretend to ignore the rest of his Guildmates any longer. His face burned nearly as hot as his ass.

Rune was gone, though Alik hadn't noticed when. Vex was glaring daggers at Mercer, who stood twenty feet away from anyone else with his legs akimbo, arms crossed over his chest, watching Alik. Alik's eyes stuttered away from the Guild Master to see Thrynn give him a last speculative look before leaving the Cistern via the graveyard passageway. Niruin and Dirge were-- separately-- leaning against the wall and staring at Alik: Niruin with his face hidden in shadow, and Dirge with open hunger.

Struggling for some kind of dignity, Alik managed to hobble two steps before Brynjolf had to catch him. The walk across the Cistern had never seemed so torturous. He wanted nothing but to lie down on the floor and expire... but that would mean lying at the foot of Mercer's desk.

With Brynjolf gripping his elbow, Alik clenched his trembling jaw and staggered into the Ragged Flagon one agonized step at a time.

Vekel was doing a poor job of concealing his interest while wiping glasses at the bar. Alik  _knew_  he hadn't really been there the whole time. Aside from him, however, the Flagon was empty.

"Give us a healing potion," Brynjolf ordered, as Alik hunched over and put his elbows on the bar. His gratitude for the support-- both the bar's and Brynjolf's-- was bitter.

"We haven't got many left," Vekel protested. "They're reserved for--"

"I didn't ask you a fucking question," Brynjolf snapped, his face even more dangerous than the utterly uncharacteristic expletive. "Give it to him."

Vekel gave it to him. Alik drank it in three gulps, his parched throat crying out for more.

He dropped the flask on the bar, grabbed a bottle of mead at random, and lurched off toward the Ratway. Some of the pain had abated, leaving him merely sore, but he was still dizzy, his mind too loosely connected to his body, and the humiliation was as sharp as ever. He didn't care if Vekel came after him with the axe handle from behind the bar for stealing mead. He had no carefully reheared quips. He just wanted to leave.

Behind him, Brynjolf's command stayed Vekel's hand from the axe handle.

Alik took the cork in his mouth, yanked and spat it out, and limped through the doorway into the dark.


End file.
